The present invention relates generally to monitoring of data streams, and more particularly, relates to providing situation awareness by monitoring incoming data streams using a rule base. The incoming data streams can be sent by hunter and gatherer agents or can be incoming message traffic.
In government and commercial environments, human activity is directed at understanding events in the real world and solving problems based on that understanding. This process is called Situation Awareness.
Rapid advances in computer technologies such as remote sensing, networking and data mining have in many cases overwhelmed organizational and visualization tools used to interpret and respond to the information. As autonomous intelligent agents and subscription-based xe2x80x9cpushxe2x80x9d technology becomes commonplace, this flood of information will increase to tidal wave proportions.
The traditional response to these types of problems has been to build an individualized user environment tuned carefully to the needs of the specific problem to be solved. Each type of data processed or produced by the system has a customized user interface dedicated to exploiting it.
While this approach can be effective, experience has shown that it is also often expensive and high-risk to build such systems. A major reason is that there is little opportunity for code reuse; the system must be built from the ground up. After becoming operational, these systems tend to be hard to adapt to changes in an organization""s workflow process. These factors led us to seek xe2x80x9chorizontalxe2x80x9d system architectures and end user environments; as the problem of data overload becomes part of everyone""s experience, the need for such solutions becomes urgent.
Intelligent systems have been developed which are focused on the needs of situation awareness users. These systems shared a common internal system architecture that significantly lowered system development cost and risk. The flexibility of the architecture was demonstrated when it solved a wide variety of user problems including terrorist activity analysis, low intensity conflict monitoring, military intelligence, and strategic threat assessment. However, the goal of a generic user environment remained unrealized throughout this period. Some generic, reusable user tools could be developed, but most had to be closely linked to the problem being solved.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for monitoring and sorting incoming data streams using a rule base.
It is another object of the present invention to provide incoming data stream which is sent by hunter agents and gatherer agents to a presence.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a rule base which can sort the incoming data streams and provide a display of an event stream on a time line.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a method and apparatus in which one or more data streams are sent to a computer and the data streams are sorted using a rule base into streams representative of events. The incoming data streams can be sent by hunter agents which search for specified types of data and forward the data to the computer. The incoming data stream can also be sent by a gatherer agent. The incoming data stream can also be incoming message traffic such as e-mail and other types of message traffic data. The incoming message traffic data is then sorted into event streams and can be displayed as event streams on a time line. Actions can be taken based upon specified events. Thus, events from disjointed sources can be sorted and displayed in a unified manner in which a user can readily and quickly know which events have occurred for a particular issue, such as a forest fire, hospital patient, etc.
The foregoing objects of the present invention are also achieved by a method for monitoring an incoming data stream for specified events. At least one data stream is received at a computer, the data stream including data representative of events. Rules are applied to the data stream for sorting data representative of events and for taking an action based on a specified event.
The foregoing objects of the present invention are also achieved by an article including at least one sequence of machine executable instructions. A medium bears the executable instructions in machine readable form, wherein execution of the instructions by one or more processors causes the one or more processors to receive at least one data stream at a computer, the data stream including data representative of events. The processors apply rules to the data stream for sorting data representative of events and for taking an action based on a specified event.
The foregoing objects of the present invention are also achieved by a computer architecture for monitoring an incoming data stream for specified events. The computer architecture includes receiving means for receiving at least one data stream at a computer, the data stream including data representative of events. The computer architecture also includes applying means for applying rules to the data stream for sorting data representative of events and for taking an action based on a specified event.
The foregoing objects of the present invention are also achieved by a computer system including a processor and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory having stored therein sequences of instructions, which, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to perform the following steps. At least one data stream is received at a computer, the data stream including data representative of events. Rules are applied to the data stream for sorting data representative of events and for taking an action based on a specified event.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from following detailed description, wherein the preferred embodiments of the invention are shown and described, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated of carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description thereof are to be regarded as illustrative in nature, and not as restrictive.